The house was beautiful and spacious, its decorations and
appointments were not mere testimonies to freedom of expenditure,
but expressions of a dignified and cultivated thought. Judith
followed her mother from room to room in one of her singular
moods. The loftiness of the walls, the breadth and space about
her made her, at intervals, draw in her breath with pleasure. The
pictures, the colours, the rich and beautiful textures she saw
brought to her the free--and at the same time soothed--feeling
she remembered as the chief feature of the dreams in which she
"fell awake." But beyond all other things she rejoiced in the
height and space, the sweep of view through one large room into
another. She continually paused and stood with her face lifted
looking up at the pictured things floating on a ceiling above
her. Once, when she had stood doing this long enough to forget
herself, she was startled by her mother's laugh, which broke in
upon the silence about them with a curiously earthly sound which
was almost a shock.
"Wake up, Judy; have you gone off in a dream? You look all the
time as if you was walking in your sleep."
"It's so high," said Judy. "Those clouds make it look like the sky."
"I've got to set these chairs straight," said Jane. "Looks like
they'd been havin' a concert here. All these chairs together an'
that part of the room clear."
She began to move the chairs and rearrange them, bustling about
cheerfully and talking the while. Presently she stooped to pick
something up.
"What's this," she said, and then uttered a startled exclamation.
"Mercy! they felt so kind of clammy they made me jump. They HAVE
had a party. Here's some of the flowers left fallen on the
carpet."
She held up a cluster of wax-white hyacinths and large heavy
rosebuds, faded to discoloration.
"This has dropped out of some set piece. It felt like cold flesh
when I first touched it. I don't like a lot of white things
together. They look too kind of mournful. Just go and get the
wastepaper basket in the library, Judy. We'll carry it around to
drop things into. Take that with you."
Judith carried the flowers into the library and bent to pick up
the basket as she dropped them into it.
As she raised her head she found her eyes looking directly into
other eyes which gazed at her from the wall. They were smiling
from the face of a child in a picture. As soon as she saw them
Judith drew in her breath and stood still, smiling, too, in
response. The picture was that of a little girl in a floating
white frock. She had a deep dimple at one corner of her mouth,
her hanging hair was like burnished copper, she held up a slender
hand with pointed fingers and Judith knew her. Oh! she knew her
quite well. She had never felt so near any one else throughout
her life.
"Judy, Judy!" Jane Foster called out. "Come here with your
basket; what you staying for?"
Judith returned to her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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